Ray Stata ’57, SM ’58
Cofounder of Analog Devices, a semiconductor company that helped transform the electronics industry, he is a life member emeritus of the MIT Corporation. His name and that of his wife adorn a campus landmark, the Frank Gehry—designed Ray and Maria Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences on Vassar Street.
Stata may be as high tech as they come, but he says one of the biggest influences on his personal and professional life has been the humanities, and the Great Books in particular.
“The humanities and social sciences focus on people and human behavior,” Stata says. “In my career at Analog, a big part of our success was attracting and retaining the right people and having an environment where people like to work and learn.” His grounding in the humanities helped in this regard, he says.
With wife Maria, he is a longstanding benefactor of humanities, arts, and social sciences education at MIT, which now includes the MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC), a Presidential Strategic Initiative designed to elevate human-centered research and teaching and to bring together scholars in the humanities, arts, and social sciences with their colleagues across the Institute.
He also lent support to the construction of the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building, in which Analog Devices named the main lobby.
Great Books sparked lifelong learning process
Stata recalls that when he arrived at MIT as an undergraduate in the 1950s, he expected to receive a strong technical education, but he was surprised to learn the humanities also formed an important component of the core curriculum.
During the first two years, he says, the Great Books, foundational texts that shaped Western thought, were required subject matter. “We essentially covered the waterfront, from the early beginnings of philosophical thinking with the Greeks up until modern times,” Stata recalls. “That gave me a grounding and got me interested. I continued to learn about philosophy after I graduated and have kept at it to this day.
“I would never have done that if MIT didn’t have that program, which inspired a lifelong learning process,” he says. “That part of my education probably has had more of an impact on my life than the technical side.
“William Barton Rogers, the founder of MIT, was an innovator in education, saying that in four years students should earn a professional degree and also a grounding in general education.
“General education was a very important part of the curriculum. And many universities had a program like that, but in the ’60s and ’70s, for a whole bunch of reasons, Great Books programs got dropped. Now at MIT, the president has made it a priority to reopen the question of what the role of humanities and social sciences should be in education at MIT.”
“It was a very important part of the curriculum. And most universities had a program like that, but in the ’60s and ’70s, for a whole bunch of reasons, they got dropped. Now at MIT, the president has made it a priority to open up the question of what the role of humanities and social sciences should be in education at MIT.”
A renewed emphasis on the humanities through MITHIC
MIT President Sally Kornbluth said at its launch: “MITHIC serves as a bold endorsement. It is an expression of how deeply we value the broad family of scholarly and artistic practices that deepen our understanding of human beings.”
MITHIC recognizes the profound impact literature can have on students, as it did on Stata. As a first step in bringing back the Great Books program, faculty in Philosophy and Literature have collaborated on a sequence of two subjects: Classics of Western Philosophy, offered in fall 2025, and Ancient Authors, offered in spring 2026.
The courses are loosely integrated, with common themes and minimal overlap, so that students could take both, though each could be taken separately. Stata’s support has made it possible for MIT to commit to offering this sequence for three years.
Stata says he has been actively engaged in promoting MITHIC. “I’m really happy to see they’re going to resurrect at least some part of the Great Books program,” he says. “While MITHIC is a broader concept, one aspect is to provide undergraduates the equivalent of the Great Books program at least as an option.
“To have an optional Great Books program for those who would be interested is really needed because a lot of students would be interested if such a program were in effect,” he says.
When asked what books he’d recommend to undergraduates today, Stata says, he would suggest they “go back and start with the Greeks, such as Plato and Aristotle. One of the first books we read was the History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, and the lessons we took from it are still valid considerations today.”
Hat tip to Mrs. Smith, high school librarian
He credited his high school librarian with introducing him to the world of books and ideas.
Her name was Mabel Smith, and she was librarian at Oxford Area High School, in the Pennsylvania farming community in which Stata was raised.
“Mrs. Smith was probably my most important teacher in high school,” he says, recalling some of books she had recommended to him: Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities; John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga; Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street; Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers; and Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
“Thanks to Mrs. Smith, I read a lot of material I wouldn’t otherwise have,” he says. “That reading expanded my vocabulary and my knowledge of words. More importantly, it began the process of general education that continued at MIT, where the required coursework in the humanities gave me a grounding in philosophy and the history of Western thought.
“To be an educated person, you have to have at least a fleeting knowledge of the great thinkers over the ages,” says Stata, who is active in MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service, which advises students and faculty who wish to become entrepreneurs.
“MIT aspires to develop leaders in many different ways. A very important part of leadership is understanding the behavior of human beings and what motivates them and knowing how to establish a culture and organization that attracts and retains great people. Analog has done that very well over the years.
“I would say my success as CEO of my company had its beginnings back in the humanities, arts, and social sciences program at MIT,” he says.
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